So, is that thing going to happen about our stories transferred to our accounts under our names, still in the Chain Stories category, or, upon request, deleted so we can put them up in a different category? If so, "Fly me" and "Wave!" can just be transferred to my name account, but I'd like to have "Harmony and Dissonance" deleted so I can put it in a category where it will be read by the targeted audience. Thanks.

So, is that thing going to happen about our stories transferred to our accounts under our names, still in the Chain Stories category, or, upon request, deleted so we can put them up in a different category? If so, "Fly me" and "Wave!" can just be transferred to my name account, but I'd like to have "Harmony and Dissonance" deleted so I can put it in a category where it will be read by the targeted audience. Thanks.

If anyone else has a specific request for their FAWC3 story, please let me know. Otherwise, they will be transferred to author accounts, still in the Chain Stories category, as with previous FAWC stories.

Been working at Eglin Air Force base since mid October. Not a lot of work going on around where I live. So been having to travel for more of the year than I like... but it's work.

Wrote the 'Green Flash' in the hotel room at night, on pen and paper, then had to type it up early one Saturday morning. Been leaving Sunday, driving 5 hours to the hotel, working 9 or 10 hour days, Monday to Friday. Then driving back Friday night.

Not a lot of time to write, read, Edit or comment. My lap top is too ancient, so even if I took it along It would be little more than a word processor. Needs a serious upgrade or really needs to be replaced.

Got rained out Monday, so had to work today to make that up. Just got home around 5:00. Got to leave out tomorrow to head back. All I can say is I'm glad it's only a 3 day week.

Ooops, those are out of season strawberries. Oh well, just as tasty. I will just have a little nibble on one of those. Suck it and see, I say .

I have been so-o-o slow to read the FAWC stories! and now you already announced who wrote which. I was trying to avoid finding out, but out of the corner of my eye, I just caught MSTarot revealing ALL! well, not quite all, perhaps if MST gets caught in a rain shower while over my way one day ...

Anyway, I have read three and here are my thoughts - without having looked to see who wrote them. I will do my best with the rest, dahlinks. It has been just a mite busy, and that was even before misadventure with the kitten and the washing machine.

Witty and hard-edged. A convincing story which we are willing to suspend disbelief to go along with. The background on flying is excellent.

The sex was a bit cerebral, as if the characters were thinking about it – or sometimes (Jasmine) thinking about other things like their revenge on Tenley, rather than getting into the moment. There were times when it was listed rather than described too. Those parts could be filled in (ho ho) some more to good effect, especially with some feeling, and people losing their sense of the world around them, the revenge they wanted to get, it’s all gone in a blissful rush of hot orgasmic pleasure.

The splitting off into different sections from different POVs didn’t quite work at first, I was wondering what was going on. Is there a way to make it more evident to the reader that this is what will be happening? Perhaps bring one of the stewardesses into the cabin with drinks and write from her POV so it’s clear it won’t all be written from one POV?

I wasn’t sure at the end – is Petersen’s wife going to get off with Tenley? I liked the suggestive way this was written. The characters are all pretty superficial about their swinging sex life! but that is the premise of the story, apart from Petersen who does it but feels guilty about it. I liked that characterisation, too.

Ha ha ha! Perrier Jouet Belle Epoque and Godiva chocolates – how could I give it anything but a 5!

The use of the picture is excellent. There is good background, as with Fly Me. Sometimes a bit too much background here, I did find myself drifting off in the accounts of IRIS, and it took me a while to understand exactly what it was. (I didn’t really care about that, I just skipped to the SEX! ).

This is a classic Mills and Boon scenario, yet done in a much sexier way. One thing I would suggest is changing the story just a tad a la M&B. It is so clear that Cam and Sierra are hot for each other that it’s not credible they would miss it. There needs to be a bit more of them pretending not to want each other, because they think the other one doesn’t really want them –then the other one thinks it’s all a sham: ‘Gosh, for someone pretending, he sure has got a big erection on show there! but he’s probably just thinking about Mrs Devereux across the water.’

The way the two couples set each other off to have sex is great. I wonder if more could be made out of that – the Devereux have stalled in their marriage, they love each other but don’t want sex any more. Then they see this young couple who remind them of themselves at a younger stage in life, it sets them off – or seeing Sierra gets Alan hot?

Characterisation is great – much better than M&B. Sierra is very good; her anxiety about her figure, that bit with the thong being so uncomfortable – I think this is a story written by a man yet that was so convincingly from the woman’s POV.

Altogether such an inventive sexy play on the picture – fab.

The tropical holiday location is deliciously well described too. There are hints of darker storylines to come? The heavy security, etc? Mmm, can’t wait for the next chapters!

That was a good title. You think the exotic location is going to be a pirates’ den or something. And what is the booty hidden? The bundles of money, or Erica’s beauty/booty?

The beginning was really well written; the way Lucy stuffs Erica with high calorie foods realistic, the way Erica tries to stuff down her feelings with food also good. The characters are drawn well and you get a good feeling for how grubby their lives are in this place. You feel so sorry for Erica, giving up her life to help out her mom.

The person in the picture speaking to her was good too. Eerie. I thought it was real, not just Erica’s imagination. I was disappointed that that tension between the three young people: Erica, the woman in the bikini and her boyfriend, went nowhere. More could have been made of those bullies in the picture. Were they echoes from Erica’s past, at school? Were they the way Erica thinks people at work talk about her, or the way they actually do talk about her? That lonely young woman, you really feel for her.

Suddenly Erica has surgery and she and Lucy go to a tropical island, all her bad feelings struggling with her self worth disappear? Way too easy. People who eat too much to boost their self esteem will feel bad about themselves no matter what size they are. To say that so long as you are slim and athletic you are fine poses a problem, too, for those who are different sizes and/or unable to play beach volleyball for whatever reason. Erica deserves to just get married, have a daughter and stuff the poor kid’s face with cholesterol! not get an interesting life.

I didn’t really notice that there was no sex, until I read the comment about it. I was caught up in the story which is about a young woman who thinks she will never get to have sex because she’s not a fashionable shape/size.

Some great character play and writing in the beginning; then I just felt it went in a predictable direction. Lots of promise in the writing, I just felt more could have been done with this inventive story.

Ooops, those are out of season strawberries. Oh well, just as tasty. I will just have a little nibble on one of those. Suck it and see, I say .

I have been so-o-o slow to read the FAWC stories! and now you already announced who wrote which. I was trying to avoid finding out, but out of the corner of my eye, I just caught MSTarot revealing ALL! well, not quite all, perhaps if MST gets caught in a rain shower while over my way one day ...

Anyway, I have read three and here are my thoughts - without having looked to see who wrote them. I will do my best with the rest, dahlinks. It has been just a mite busy, and that was even before misadventure with the kitten and the washing machine.

I had a cat jump in my dryer and piss on the warm, clean clothes.

So is it safe sex if the couple is married and the wife is already pregnant? (I mean, Naoko's blog-wise.)

"We measure things by what we are. To the maggots in the cheese... the cheese is the universe. To the worms in the corpse... the corpse is the cosmos.

How then can we be so cocksure about our world. Just because of our telescopes and microscopes and the splitting of the atom? Certainly not. Science is but an organized system of ignorance.

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. What do we know about beyond? Do we know what is behind beyond? I'm afraid some of us hardly know what is beyond behind.

Creatures of twilight and delusion, we drift toward our unknown ends. And that is why I think the best thing is not to be born.

But who is as lucky as that? To whom does it happen? Not one out of millions and millions of people."

So is it safe sex if the couple is married and the wife is already pregnant? (I mean, Naoko's blog-wise.)

As outlined in the guidelines on my blog, safe sex is as defined by the Terence Higgins Trust. It means keeping safe from STDs as well as from contributing to the increase of the human population as per Biblical instructions.

My blog is really aimed at young people who are starting to think about and explore ideas about sex. I am delighted that other people come there (as it were <snerk>) and find the reviews helpful. I do want to normalise the idea that you use a condom for young people, for reasons you can read about on my blog. So I don't review stories where there is penetrative sex without a condom being used.

Great premise, lovely romantic story, and FAWCking Heaven! some seriously hot and sensuous sex. Especially the first scene with this poor woman whose name he can’t remember.

The story is really bogged down by business though. Don’t tell us what kind of woman Lilly is – that’s like the worst Mills and Boon/Harlequin kind of writing. Let it become apparent in the way she behaves, the things she says or he says.

Like SecondCircle I was disappointed you didn’t make more of the symbolic opposition between exotic expensive tropical location and icy cold hard endurance Antarctic location. And why does Lilly have to be this bit of eye candy bimbo? Why does it have to be her brother who was the scientist who went on the trip? Could she not have been a marine biologist – that was why he built her the island paradise, then she went off to study sealife in the Antarctic. Her frozen heart! she loved him still but her feelings are all frozen up. Then he arrives to rescue her and her love for him bursts into flames and defrosts all her ... girly bits.

I mean, my brother is an engineer but if I said: My heart is broken, can I just tag along on a trip of yours contributing nothing particular to the mission? He would say, No fuck off I will be working. What on earth are you going to do except mope about? Go and get back into your own work to distract yourself. Write some more smut – just don’t show it to me. Or my friends. Except our mutual gay guy pal who we all expect to be rabidly reading smut all the time anyway.

I understand that you wanted to have the romantic wedding scene. The proposal was great fun, BTW. However, why not split the story in two and add lashings more sex. You can have the island/Antarctic story and Part II – the Happily Ever After Return to the Island.

A minor point, I wouldn’t give poor Talia a name in the story either. Let her be nameless to the reader as well. Giving her a name suggests she will be more than an incidental character.

Ruby is great but again – too much business. Don’t say: Did Asher not realise that Ruby had been such great FRIENDS with Lilly, gasp. Let Ruby be much more business-like, then when she realises Asher is going to the ball (without even a shoe to take along), she can say: “Oh but Lilly will not be there.” Then it becomes apparent as part of the story that she was great pals with Lilly.

You could find a beta reader? Just someone to read it through and put a big red line through all the unnecessary bits of business. It’s a nice story, just needs stripping down and it will be a real goer.

What a little jewel of a story. Hard, multi-facetted, the attempts by several of the readers to get into it seem to have bounced off its diamond surfaces.

I have lived in Thailand so I know what an excellent sketching of a Thai backdrop this is. The characters and the scenario were drawn with an expert hand. Several people said they couldn’t engage with the characters; they are not for the Western romantic sensibility. There is a sophisticated cruelty in this short story which is emotionally gripping as well as repellent. The doomed gentle Thai royals being fucked over in more than one way by the hung German may not appeal to most, but none of the commentators deny it’s well-written. Yet at the back of it all are deeper romantic undertones. The love of Heinrich for Krit, so powerful that he will send a sort of secret cupid-agent in to seduce Krit back to Germany. The love of Krit and Somsri, their acceptance of each other’s fucking other men, their continued attachment to each other. I suppose we won’t get a sequel which tells us more of that? but it’s not hard to imagine a nice ménage à trois for Heinrich, Krit and Somsri. And we don’t care about Lars anyway, he is such a fucker! LOL. A real James Bond, not the nice sexy one from the films.

I have three small gripes:

There were run-on sentences in some of the writing which set backdrop. These were often longer than necessary, with phrases attached to each other like truck-and-trailer in a rolling maul. E.g., It was dusk in the music room of Amnad's Thai-style house on the banks of the San Saep Klong—klong being the Thai word for canal—behind what was now the Siam Paragon shopping mall but what had once been one of the central-city royal palace grounds, the Sra Pathum Palace. A good editor could tidy those up.

The descriptions of a quantity of ‘berry-brown’ servants floating about ‘at your service’ (wink wink) had tones of arrogance which could be interpreted as racism, when written about Asians.

The sex was frequent but a bit perfunctory. I could have done with some more description in some, not all, of the sex scenes.

I would agree that I didn’t get a great sense of the picture – it was sort of snuck in there, although given that Lars did do Somsri too – in her red bikini, I think it was sufficiently part of the story to scrape through. And I would agree that the story fit the title like a hand in a glove. Or another thing in another place <snerk>.

Ooh, I am really enjoying reading these stories without knowing who wrote them. (I haven't even had time to go and see who entered the competition so I have no idea at all! although I think I might be able to guess who wrote Harmony and Dissonance, LOL.) So if you can hold off shifting the stories to the proper authors for a few days I would love to finish doing my feedback in this anonymous way.